


Catseye

by BouncepawWritesStuff (Halaani)



Series: Gembond [1]
Category: Borderlands, Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Other, Queerplatonic Relationships, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 13:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15462081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halaani/pseuds/BouncepawWritesStuff
Summary: The Vault of the Traveler was supposed to set them all up for a good long while, but all it did was rip a friend away from them and set forward a series of events they could have never foreseen.It's been over a year and a half since Rhys vanished into the Vault and wasn't sent back out. As much as it pains them, they've had to move on with their lives. But fate, and the Eridians, have far more planned for them they ever could've thought.





	Catseye

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into the Borderlands fandom. I just started playing the games about a month ago after I picked up Tales as part of a Humble Bundle. There's more planned for this if people end up being interested in it. First in a possible series.
> 
> This operates under the assumption that the Vaults were more than repositories for some bad ass loot.

It was supposed to be an easy job. Something to shake the dust off, warm them back up into the vault hunting business after months and months of searching for their missing fourth friend and little actual combat. It had been almost a year and half since Rhys had disappeared with the light of the vault and had not been spat back out with Fiona.

For Fiona, bare seconds had passed, but it had been weeks of frantic searching where Sasha, Athena and Janey and Vaughn and countless Children of Helios had scoured hundreds of miles of desert for them while Gortys and Loader Bot did their best to try and track his cybernetics in an effort to find them both, old Hyperion software turned to better purpose. 

Her return had been cause for celebration, but it was short lived when they realized Rhys was not with her and that they still had no idea where the wayward cybernetic man was gone to.

Eventually though Athena and Janey needed to return to Hollow Point to run the garage and the Children needed to focus on building their lives out of the metal graveyard of the space station. Vaughn would come out when he could be spared for a few days, but the Village in the Ruins needed it's leader, even as the Children became braver, bolder and more at home on Pandora.

Sasha and Fiona never gave up, picking up odd jobs at various settlements as they drive the caravan around, desperately hoping to hear some rumor of a lanky suit out of his element or a sight of overly flashy cybernetics.

Eventually, even Sasha gave up, though it was obvious it broke her heart to do. To her, Rhys was like the older dorky brother she never knew she wanted, and despite the shortness of the time they'd known him, he'd grown on them, like some stupid large asshole cat too cute for his own good.

Zer0 and the other hunters offered to keep an ear to the ground and Janey released Athena to them to restart their training.

Vaughn took the news hardest of all, and Fiona had too many nights of waking up to heart-broken whimpers in the room next door, turning over and pressing a pillow over her ears to offer what semblance of privacy she could in the thin walls of their constructed apartment.

(Fiona tried so, so hard not to think of quiet nights on the caravan chugging towards the Atlas dome. Tried not to remember gentle fingers in amber locks, soft smiles and warm words exchanged in the soft blue glow of a cybernetic eye. Of soft fingers over scarred flesh and warm metal. Of an easy affection that spoke of years of a deep emotional connection that she could probably never hope to comprehend.)

That had been almost three months ago. Vaughn had thrown himself into the care of the Village in the Ruins and his Children, still carrying about him the mein of a man in mourning. No one mentioned it when he returned from a three day patrol, smelling faintly of fire and moonshine, a familiar pattern inked into the side of his neck in a shade of blue.

And Fiona and Sasha? They dealt with the loss in the only way they knew how. A crime spree in several settlements, leaving them baffled with pretty faces and quick words and gunfire. And now?

This mission was supposed to be simple. Athena was in Hollow Point with Janey again, settling for popping in on them every few weeks. She figured this job would be good for them. A camp of bandits that had been harassing the Village in the Ruins as not many did now that the Children had such a fearsome reputation for defending their little patch of the playground.

Only, the camp seemed deserted. 

Or, rather, not deserted, but destroyed. Like some huge trample of animals or maybe one of the other vault hunters had paid a visit and left this in their wake. Corpses lay strewn about carelessly, likely where they fell, and blood had leaked and caked into the sand, leaving behind frankly disgusting stains in the dirt. Tents lay rended on their poles and fires were scattered from their rings and barrels.

Ok, this was too much chaos for even one of the other vault hunters. Even Krieg didn't leave such destruction in his path. And the marks! Like deep claws had sunk into flesh and torn away, flaying open flesh in thick neat lines, some larger than others. There was likely no one alive in the entire camp, but they were careful as they moved forward, guns ready to spring up at a moment's notice.

"What do you think it was? Skag pack?" Even as Sasha said it aloud, Fiona could hear the disbelief in her voice and she shook her head, pulling up the scarf to cover her nose, desperately trying to block out the copper scent of blood that soaked the land.

"Not even a rabid skag pack could do this much damage. And no bodies? Any half-assed bandit with a gun can take out a couple skags. There would be something. No crush marks so it's definitely not some horrible variety of bullymong making their home here in the dessert."

The sisters shared a shudder at the mere thought of that.

"Maybe Athena knows?" Fiona wrinkled her nose at the thought of disturbing their mentor so early into their first mission back but this was very quickly becoming apparent that it was well out of their level of expertise.

"Yeah, alright. Take a look around but stay within sight." Sasha rolled her eyes but gave her an affectionate hip check as she passed her and Fiona opened up her comm, scrolling until she came to Athena's business comm frequency. It rang for only a few moments before Athena's frowning face came into view. 

"I really can't leave you two alone for more than a few days can I?" She gruffed and Fiona could hear Janey's bright laugh in the background.

"I'd take more offense to that if we weren't so out of our depth here." Something in her voice must have caught Athena's attention because she was suddenly closer to the screen, face set in a mask of consternation.

"Show me." Was all she said and Fiona turned the comm around so Athena could see the wreck of the destroyed camp. Judging by the intake of breath from the other end, it was something unusual even for the veteran vault hunter.

"No animal bodies, just bandits. Bandit bodies and these claw marks, but nothing else besides a lot of blood."

"I got something!" Fiona sighed. Leave it to her kid sister to find something just as she was reporting on the lack of nothing around them. Fiona loped over to where she was crouching in the sand near the base of one of the ruined tents. There in the sand was something glinting and purple, some viscous liquid refusing to meld into the sand like all the blood around them.

"Get to the caravan. Now." Both sisters exchanged alarmed looks and Fiona turned the comm back, prepared to demand an explanation of her but Athena was being helped into her armor by Janey. "Don't argue! Into the caravan and lock the door. I'm going to fast travel to the Village and meet you there. Do not drive! You'll only attract it's attention."

Self-preservation won out over curiosity and both women made their way swiftly back to the caravan, bolting the door behind them and pulling the heavy metal shade down over the windshield. Athena had hung up on them, but Sasha almost instantly got a call from Vaughn. Behind Vaughn they could see the Children scrambling into technicals, whooping and hollering the whole while. 

"Athena just got here and we're mobilizing. We'll be at your location in about an hour. Athena wants us to stop about a mile away and come on foot."

"Did she tell you what we were dealing with? She just saw the purple stuff and told us to book it back to the caravan." Before Vaughn could answer Athena's voice rang in from behind. 

"Muscles! Give me that comm and drive!" There was a tussle as the comm was passed off and the roaring of the technicals filled the air and Athena's face was back, grim and pale ina way they'd never seen before, even when she was facing down the end of Vallory's rocket launcher.

"Will someone just tell us what's going on?!" Sasha's patience was waning in the way it did when the situation was out of her control for too long. To be fair, Fiona was feeling the same way and she watched intently as Athena sighed heavily and looked so very uncharacteristically unsure.

"There's- well there's no real name for them. Just stories, legends that started coming around shortly after people started hearing about vaults and Sirens. They're like guardians, especially to powerful Sirens, people bent and twisted by the power of eridium and the vault artifacts. There's only two confirmed sightings in history and the last one was a very, very long time ago. Like, hundreds of years."

She rubbed her face with one hand, leaning over to mutter something to Vaughn inaudibly. "They rampage and feed until they're at full power and then, well, no one is sure. No one survived when the last one eventually reached that level. And judging by the brutality of this attack, and the fact that most of their blood is still there, it's done feeding and it's playing now. Stretching powers and getting used to them."

Something like horror sank deep in her gut, heavy and dark and Fiona shuddered. Some awful Eridian construction, fed and bled on dozens if not hundreds of bandits, pet and protector to a very powerful Siren? That had possible apocalypse written all over it. Or at least a very bad time.

"How do we kill it?" Fiona asked, doing her best to mask her sudden crushing fear.

"We don't." At their perplexed looks Athena gave them a grim expression of determination. "Like I said, at this level it'd shred each and every one of us and then use our ribs as chew toys. Our best bet is to distract it long enough with flash bangs to get you out of there. They supposedly have excellent hearing and sight, so enough of them set off consecutively should disable it enough for everyone to safely retreat. If we're out of eyesight it should lose interest enough to leave us alone."

Nothing was spoken of whatever catastrophic event that had, in the past, killed all witnesses. Supposedly it wasn't enough to rend the planet to shreds, so maybe the impact was smaller than that, or maybe the job of the Siren and her pet had nothing to do with the planet's surface.

"Just hang tight, we'll be there shortly."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He snuffled in the crate, ignoring the cold wind on his skin, cutting through his tattered leather and cloth trousers. It was getting dark and colder still, and while the cold was no match for him, he knew his Siren hated the cold. Blankets. He needed blankets, and lots of them.

The crate yielded several thick comforters and he yanked them out, grabbing them up carefully in his claws and scurrying away from the decimated camp to the cave where his Siren lay. She was so much healthier now, but he couldn't resist the nervous tug at their bond, chuffing with relief when she pushed back with _warmth-love-amusement._

Having another person in his head had taken getting used to, but his Siren felt such a part of him that the adjustment had taken mere minutes. Weeks ago, they'd been flung out into the merciless desert in flash of purple and blue lightning. She was weak and thin, barely conscious, and he hardly stronger than a runty skag pup. But he knew what he was meant to do. Feed and grow, provide, protect his Siren. His. No one else. The last one was incomplete, unworthy, wrong, but he was perfect and she would be _safe-loved-his._ Nothing would stand in the way of that.

And so he'd stashed his Siren in the most spacious but secure cave he could find, and he hunted. Everything he could get his claws on he killed and bled, drinking forth their strength and making it his. If he was strong, so was she. If he was fed, so was she. His warmth, her warmth. 

Every night he would curl around her, and she was so small in comparison to his own frame. She would whisper words of love and gratitude into his temple, their bond thrumming with content and his purr filling the cave. She told the stories of a man she once knew, all bright grins and love of cats and freckles high on his cheeks. Of a man with stupid socks who could make her smile no matter what. Of a man who had loved her but had gone so very, very wrong.

Sometimes, the stories annoyed him. Not that she would tell him them, but rather sometimes he felt half complete when she spoke, even with their bond humming in his head. Like there was another person in head, just out of reach of him and without him he would never be right. She would soothe him, promise him that it would come in time, and he would content himself with her declarations. His Siren knew best.

Now though, now he was strong. He hadn't meant to bleed the whole camp, only the last few he needed to be full, and then he wouldn't need to hunt for weeks, but the others wouldn't leave him alone and they tried to follow him back to the cave and he couldn't allow that. He could admit he'd gone overboard and his Siren was sure to chastise him for it but her safety was worth it.

The cave was warm for the fire that crackled merrily in the squat barrel and he tottered forward, dropping his armload of comforters on his Siren, purring at her shrieks of indignant laughter. Soon she had cocooned herself and he had dragged in enough old building timbers to keep the fire going overnight. He had just settled his body around her when a sound caught his ear and he raised his head. His Siren's hand stilled their motions in his patchy hair as he began to growl.

People. People in vehicles. Had they come for his Siren? Knowing he wouldn't settle until he'd checked it out, his Siren gave him leave to go and he sprang out of the cave, bare feet silent on still-damp sand as he headed towards the noises.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was barely an hour but already creeping dark when Athena rang them again to let them know they could see the caravan where they were. She wanted them to ready the caravan to go, because as soon as the creature was stunned they would need to peel backwards and away, wasting no time to get away. They would only have a few minutes. Athena, Vaughn and three of their fastest runners were coming weighed down with grenades. They would stun the creature, jump into the caravan and then they would connect with all the technicals a couple miles away.

Fiona raised the shutter as Sasha settled into the driver's seat, ready to turn the key as soon as the others were in. Fiona went to the door, ready to throw it open the minute she need to. Moments later the raiding party was there and Athena nodded, watching as one of the Children yanked a pin out of a grenade and tossed it into the dirt.

There was a sharp crack and a muted flash of light and then silence.

Then a roar shook the camp and a humanoid shape came crashing to the ground from one of the cliffs surrounding the camp, leaving a huge crater in the sand. The creature roared, a sound human vocal cords should not be able to make. But then again, according to Athena, it wasn't really human anymore, was it?

Everyone cocked their arms back, prepared to throw the grenades when a flicker of fire passed over the creature's face and Fiona felt herself freeze in utter horror just as Vaughn's scream rent the air.

"STOP!"

The Children immediately lowered their arms even as Athena hissed a curse at him. Even the creature stopped, lowering its arms and settling down into all fours. Athena's face turned the color of spoiled cream and she gasped and Fiona felt what little strength she had leave her knees as she slammed the door open noisily, spilling into the sand as if she could do nothing else, her sister behind her.

Rhys.

It was Rhys, it just had to be. He was tall still, so stupidly tall, and lanky but there was whipchord muscle there now, rippling as he shifted. His metallic arm was all chrome and black, purple lights twinkling here and there and his eyes, purple and slitted both watched them with confusion and hope and caution. Both hands ended in wicked claws and one fang hung over his lip. His hair, once so sleek and full, was shorter and uneven, like it had been groomed with unsteady claws and small black and purple horns, probably half a foot, jutted out of the top of his skull. 

Wounds marred pale skin, some old, some new and still dripping pale purple fluid and they mixed with a terrible beauty into the new vibrant blue and purple tattoos that tracked over his entire torso, dipping into the waistband of his pants.. He was crouched in the sand like a dog, a long black tail with a purple tuft swishing in the air, a curious little whining sound leaving him as he took a few cautious steps forward. He walked on two legs and with an odd sinuous grace that was distinctly not human.

Athena raised her gun, making as if to shoot him out of instinct but Vaughn surged towards the other man, babbling his name all the while and bowling into him. Rhys went with momentum happily, rolling with Vaughn in the sand and nuzzling him, Vaughn's watery voice mixing with Rhys' high sounds of what was unmistakably joy. 

Eventually they came to a stop, Rhys comfortably sprawled out under the smaller man, eyes closed and purring as Vaughn burrowed into his chest. It seemed like a moment they were very much not meant to witness and the Children had already turned away, Athena as well.

"Aww that's really cute!" They whipped around to the new voice and came face to face with a young girl. She was wearing fairly put together leathers in white and gold of all colors, and her long black hair was braided with obvious care, except for where it was shorn close to her head, revealing metallic ports. She was gazing at the scene with open affection as she swung her legs from her perch on an outcropping. She was barely a teen, maybe fourteen at most but she radiated power like nothing Fiona had ever felt in her life, except for maybe the vault.

Oh. Her brain put together the pieces faster than she would've thought possible at the moment. This must be the Siren.

"And who are you?"

The girl took her eyes off the scene to look at Athena, blue eyes calculating for a moment before she grinned widely and jumped lightly down, moving towards them with a grace that belied her age.

"Yea I suppose that's as good a place as any to start, since I can't imagine managing to pull those two apart any time in the near future." Her voice was light with honest joy and amusement.

"So, uh, yea! Hi, I'm Angel."


End file.
